Village council unanimously approved architectural and design plans for the new village hall renovation project at the old senior center located at 21 E. Church Street Monday night at a special meeting.

Council authorized administration to proceed with the design and bid documents with alternate add-ons and deducts to bid out the renovation project for the new facility.

Village Manager Darwin McClary said the bids will be the driving force for whether the village can continue with the project as planned.

Initially a pre-fabricated tower shelter was projected to cost the village roughly $40,000. However the village now has to construct their own storage shelter at a cost of $22,000 more because plans for the pre-made shelter fell through. A new storage facility is required to house equipment currently stored on the second floor of village hall in order to fully move out of the current hall on Flint St.

"On top of that the county had originally indicated to us that they were going to cover the costs of moving their equipment from the upstairs to the new tower shelter, and now they're not. So that threw a huge wrench in things," McClary said.

Because council members were becoming concerned with additional costs, McClary suggested to bid out the entire project first to determine if it was cost-efficient enough to pursue.

"We are now scrambling to try and make up that difference. It's a lot of money, that's about two-thirds of the new financial software package we have to buy as part of our IT upgrades," McClary said.

The bids will take about two weeks to prepare, McClary said, and will be on the market for at least three weeks.

Lockharts BBQ had signed a development and purchase agreement with the understanding they would close on the current village hall property by July 15. However they withdrew their signatures because the closing date would be delayed by at least a month, McClary said.

Lockharts BBQ will reevaluate their agreements when more information is known about the final bid numbers for the village hall renovation project.